Here’s a Monday morning link for all y’all. Dan Cohen notes an interesting way to measure a library’s holdings : by evaluating the collection’s “uniqueness.”
This may be an interesting metric that could be useful at the local-consortial level? I’ll let the Collections Librarians answer that, though. Read it here:
Dan Cohen: Visualizing the Uniqueness, and Conformity, of Libraries
This has not been a good spring for Canadian librarians and archivists, especially those who work at federal libraries and archives, which are being de-funded and dismantled by federal budget cuts. These information centres sustain government and public research capacity. Their ability to create, preserve, and provide access to public information in our country is at risk.
These cuts, and the centres and programmes in jeopardy, include:
I’m missing some announcements since I was away when so many of these cuts were announced, but this list nonetheless clarifies the seriousness of the situation. In the space of a few weeks, the federal government has severely hampered the nation’s ability to gather, document, use, and disseminate government and cultural information.
You can learn what many of these cuts mean in clear, practical terms by reading this post written by my archivist friend, Creighton Barrett, at Dalhousie University’s Archives and Special Collections. Creighton explains how these cuts negatively affect the university’s ability to collect and maintain the records used by scholars and citizens in one community alone, and rightly notes that they are a “devastating” blow to information access in Canada. Now, consider how Creighton’s list grows when you add to it the ways in which these same cuts affect the libraries and archives in your own community, and then all other libraries and archives in Canada. And we haven’t even touched what these broader cuts mean for LAC’s programming and resources, StatCan programming, and the research capacity of federal departments and agencies. “Devastating,” may well be an understatement in the long run.
These budget cuts are a knock-out punch to how public information is accessed and used across the country. The cuts not only affect the library community and possibly your civil-service-friend who lives down the road. They will affect the manner in which our society is able to find and use public information. If public data is no longer collected (see StatCan), preserved (see LAC, NADP, CCA), disseminated and used (see PDS/DSP and cuts at departmental libraries), then does the information even exist in the first place? There will be less government and public information, fewer means to access this information, and fewer opportunities to do so.
Take a moment and recall the freedom you have been afforded to speak freely in this nation. The utility of that freedom is dependent on your ability to access the information you use to learn, to criticize, to praise, or to condemn. If knowledge is power, then a public whose national information centres and access points are ill-funded is a weakling. Libraries and archives provide Canadians with direct access to key government information, and for that very reason, they should be funded to the hilt.
This is where I get to my point: We are now facing a situation in Canada where government information has suddenly become far more difficult to collect, to access, and to use. The funding cuts that Canada’s libraries and archives face is an affront to the proper functioning of a contemporary democratic society. These cuts will impede the country’s ability to access public and government information, which will make it difficult for Canadians to criticize government practices, past and present.
I mentioned on Twitter that these cuts show us that the work of librarians and archivists are crucial to the nation’s interest. We are not mere record keepers, and neither do we spend our days merely dusting cobwebs off of old books. We are the people who maintain collections of public information, and we are the people who provide and nurture access to information. Many of us see ourselves as guardians of the public’s right to access information. If we take on that guardianship, then we must defend and protect these collections and access points. I’m not talking about a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 job. I’m talking about advocacy, which doesn’t have an on/off switch. Either you do it or you don’t.
So, what should you do? Get informed, speak up, and act. Write letters to the editor. Write to your professional associations and other like-minded organizations; lend them your support, and when needed, tell them to add force to their own statements. Write to your MPs, to other MPs (especially to MPs who sit on government benches), to cabinet members, and to the PMO. When you’re socializing with friends who aren’t librarians and archivists, mention how our work affects their work and their personal lives. Massive cuts to the nation’s libraries and archives do not serve the public good. These cuts may help balance the financial books, but they create an information deficit that inhibits research, stymies dialogue and criticism, and makes government more distant from the people.
This little piece of news hasn’t yet got much coverage in the popular press, but it should. It shows why Canadians (and everyone, really) must be concerned about digital locks. Librarians and lawyers are the ones taking note of it right now, but it’s an issue we should all worry about:
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/librarybazaar/status/139008379023667201"]
Yes, that’s right – as Michael Geist reports, if you are Canadian and have ever purchased music through Napster Canada, then you run the risk of losing access to content you have paid for:
These downloads are DRM-encoded WMA files and can be backed up by burning them to audio CDs. Doing this will allow you access to your music on any CD player and generally have a maintenance free permanent copy. If you do not back up your purchased Napster music downloads by burning them to CD and you later change or reinstall your computer’s operating system, have a system failure or experience DRM corruption, then the downloads will stop playing and you will permanently lose access to them.
(Source: Napster Canada PR via Geist’s blog)
Let’s put this into perspective:
I suppose that Napster Canada/Rhapsody is acting in good faith when they explain to Canadian customers how to ensure that the content they have already purchased will always be accessible. Napster/Rhapsody has informed customers that all they need to do is copy the data to audio CDs to ensure that the music can be played even if the digital lock on the file is ever corrupted. But does anyone else find it a tiny bit illogical that a company that normally espouses the use of digital locks is now effectively telling its customers to break the law and circumvent the lock in order to make sure they will always be able to access this music?
Digital Rights Management is something we must be wary of. DRM limits the consumer’s rights to the content he or she has purchased; it “manages” rights by taking them away from the consumer. This is of particular concern in Canada, when so many organizations are subsidiaries of larger companies located elsewhere. If Napster pulls out of the Canadian market, will the digital locks that limit access to the content you purchased still be supported? It seems not. If Amazon were ever to pull out of the Canadian market (which is an unlikely scenario, but a worthy point to make), would its digital locks that limit access to the content you purchased still be supported? That would be up to Amazon to decide. Digital locks keep your purchases at the mercy of the vendor, which is reason enough to oppose them.
Copyright is a mess, especially in Canada. The law is antiquated and it does need an overhaul to actually work in our digital landscape. But DRM and digital locks place an undue burden and risk on consumers (be they individuals, families, or libraries), most of whom are law-abiding citizens, respect intellectually property and rights, and do not copy content.
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Post script: Am I suggesting we back out of all e-content on account of DRM? No, I’m not. What I’m trying to show, like so many others, is that the system is out of balance right now and will remain so in the future. Advocacy is required to fix this.
The new Google Reader was released this week. Its UI changes have streamlined its sharing functions in order to integrate it as easily as possible with Google Plus. At first, I didn’t mind the changes, mostly because the clean white interface has kept distractions to a minimum on the Reader Interface.
But I’ve now changed my mind. I’m not sure I like the Google Reader changes. The new interface’s clean lines means that readability has stayed the same, if not improved, i.e., its look and feel seem to promote the act of reading over skimming. But the changes to its sharing function really is an issue. Sure, I can share things to G+, but clicking on the +1 button is akin to shouting into the din of the Internet. I can share and share and share as much as I like, but I don’t know if people are sharing their own Google Reader items back into my G+ stream. Furthermore, I don’t know what kind of content they’re sharing anymore. Are the shared items in my Google+ Stream coming from a valued Google Reader store? Or are these items just clicks and pages found while surfing the net? At best, the former Google Reader dialogue is now feigned (it’s now a monologue on G+), and the quality of those shared pages on G+ is indeterminable. I’m now looking for options.
The changes we’ve seen to Google Reader has got me thinking again about the nature of reading, skimming, and sharing on the Internet. What made Google Reader so great (aside from the emphasis on reading, see above) was the assurance of quality that came with its shared items. Shared Items on Google Reader were posts that came from blogs and websites that people believed were important enough to read regularly as opposed to mere posts and pages found while they or their friends surfed – and skimmed – the Internet. People who used Google Reader had a better assurance that the content they found in their shared folder was carefully chosen, was fit for consumption, and required some of their time and attention in order to synthesize.
The fact that blog posts and shared items in Google Reader sat in a folder until the user actually read them shows the importance of the items’ content. Google Reader’s interface – like all RSS interfaces – demanded the user actually read the content he or she saved to the system: content did not disappear until you at least saw that it arrived for you to read. This premise behind Google Reader, i.e., posts are to be saved for later reading, meant that its users selected content that was not merely ephemeral. By its very nature, Google Reader asked the user to choose only the best content on the web and to store it in a separate space to read at a later time. By and large, shared items on Google Reader had a quality assurance label stuck to them: these posts were determined to be distinct from the general “of the moment” nature of the web and therefore should be treated with care. Anything shared on Google Reader required special attention because some one said, “This content came from a valued source and ought to be read, and it is not going away until you at least see that I’ve shared it with you.”
Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and so many other social sites do not do this. Social networks promote connections above all else, so the content is almost always “of the moment” (that’s the second time I’ve said that). Content on social sites is pinned to a moment in time, but the conversation always moves forward. If you log in to Facebook at 2pm, you only see the conversations happening at 2pm; you must look carefully for what your friends shared earlier in the day. That shared content may have been valuable, but there is no easy way to flag that value on social networks since content is subordinated to relationships and connections as they exist the moment you are online.
I like Google Plus, I really do. But like other social media sites, Google Plus emphasizes shared connections and the constant stream of chatter that arrives on your screen. Of course, we can stop that stream at any time, click on a link, and fully consume what has been offered to us, but a social site’s design promotes social conversations over thought and analysis. I still believe that the “Internet Age” is an age of skimming. We are living in a time where thorough, critical analysis has been subordinated to the conversation. I’d like to see a balance restored between the two. So long as we aren’t reading well – so long as we aren’t taking the time to think critically about what we visit and read online – we are preventing those conversations from reaching their full potential.
Internet 2.0! Now skim faster and shallower!
Are you coming to #CLA2011 (or #CLA11) in Halifax, Nova Scotia? Then this Google Map may come in handy. I created a Google Map to help a few librarian-friends from across Canada decide on some things to do in Halifax and then decided to share it with the world. Enjoy, contribute, and share and share alike.
And since you’re coming to CLA 2011, make sure you visit and say Hi! during Saturday morning’s Technology Lightning Strikes! panel at 8:30 (Session G49). I’m going to be speaking with a bunch of excellent librarians (read: absolute tech superstars who know so much more than me!) about emerging technology trends and how to integrate them into your everyday work with little fuss and hardly any muss. I’ll post more details on this in a later post.
At any rate, come say Hi, or tweet me on Twitter – I like meeting people and showing them about this town – Halifax is a great town to visit.
-mike.
Apparently Seth Godin has ideas about libraries
Seth Godin wrote a great post today – I’m sure you’ve read it by now – on the “The Future of the Library.” It’s a future with librarians who serve as catalysts of digital information access and as collaborators with their patrons. Given the state of the economy and the fact that libraries have always used the latest technologies to collect, store, and diffuse information, the “library of the future” is always a favourite blog topic, even outside of librarianship. But when some one who works in spheres well beyond what we do, some one like Seth Godin, waxes poetic on our profession, we stand up and take notice.
And take notice we did. Some of the earliest commenters include:
I held back on my two cents because I had too many demands on my Monday (like a third cup of coffee to make it through the afternoon), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion. When it comes down to it, I agree with Seth. Mind you, Godin isn’t saying anything new or profound either about or to librarians. Seth is saying all the things that many of have said before, that:
[a] librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
Or, when discussing the pedagogical aspect of our work, that any good librarian will take:
responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.
Seth likes his animal imagery, for sure: librarians are data hounds who help our youngsters grow into being data sharks. I like these metaphors, too, and like them a lot. What’s there not to like in these statements? Seth Godin is speaking about the potential and the responsibility that our profession has, and he’s speaking to a general audience. Godin is speaking to the world and to librarians when he says he foresees a library as a place full of digital and print containers of information, managed by librarians who know where all the information is stored, how to get to it, and how it all fits together. This is a future where librarians don’t work in dusty offices, don’t work with card catalogues, and don’t shush people.
But wait a second. Seth has got some great ideas, but I think the future Seth wants is very much here already. Librarians are at the cutting edge of tech, bringing people and their data and information together. We help people create knowledge. Hell, we can make the trains run on time.
Or, that is, a lot of the time, we can help others make the trains run on time. And here’s my real issue, which doesn’t haven so much to do with Seth as it has to do with ourselves. I’m glad to see that Seth and I are on the same page and that we both think that librarians need to be tech mavens and data gurus. But the problem is that a lot of us aren’t. A lot of us are focused squarely on the educational side of the profession. There is nothing wrong with that. We are teachers, after all, and we have a crucial role to play in research methods, in critical thinking, and in lifelong learning. I couldn’t be more serious when I say that since I work in information literacy and know first-hand that some one has got to show these students how to create a research plan, how to mock up a topic and a subject, how to open a database and how to create a hypothesis. I am dead-serious about this because I’ve met enough students in my short time as a librarian to know that these skills are not taught adequately in all classrooms (this is not the fault of teachers, by the way: it’s symptomatic of poorly funded educational systems at all levels, in my mind). Indeed, many of us must be focused on our pedagogical role because it is an important and vital part of our professional obligations. But when so many of us are working in the front of the house on the educational side of things, who is it that’s making sure the gears don’t get gummed up and slow down the system? Who really is working on information storage, search, retrieval, and organization?
I’m not being willfully ignorant here. I know full well that there are plenty of librarians who still work in Tech Services, in Bibliographic Control, and in Systems, and I value their work. The thing is that I value their so much that I think it’s a subfield of our profession that more of us should be acquainted with. In my place of work, a mid-sized university with some 600 academic databases from a bevy of vendors, there are very few librarians who know how they all fit together, and there are few others actively working in data collection and storage into local repositories. This is our collective loss and it it’s a disservice to our patrons and to our institutions. Collectively, we should know more about our systems and our data collection, but we don’t.
Know kung fu: rule The Matrix by understanding its architecture
Dear fellow librarians: don’t take this as a criticism of our work. Instead, take it as a call to arms. The world has gone digital, and we were there to guide it through its growing pains. MARC long ago taught us a lot about systems, authorities, and control, and this is an area we still have strong expertise in. So, let’s not sit by the wayside as the world steams ahead of us on account of the knowledge we developed and then shared in information systems and retrieval. It has become more and more apparent that the Internet really does need a strong cadre of “editors” and “curators” who truly understand how to select, store, and retrieve the best information out there; there is no single search bar to rule them all, but there are librarians who can help others find and then use the information they’re looking for. Seth Godin is right on the money in his post only because he’s seen the writing on the wall and is parroting what we know already: that the world’s gone digital and it needs some help figuring out what do with all this data. Let’s use our skills in information literacy, yes, but let’s also use our skills in information organization to fine-tune the systems already. We can’t be the best teachers of information retrieval, of information literacy and of research skills unless we understand the systems which house the information in the first place.
Excuse me for a moment while I inject a hard dose of politics into this blog about librarianship:
Stephen Harper doesn’t speak for you
And also on Slideshare:
If you’re Canadian, make sure you vote on May 2. You have your own opinions, and they are informed and valued. Remind our politicians that there are many more voices in Canada than they like to think.
